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Author | Topic: Atheists control science | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Taq Member Posts: 10073 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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Just two examples - the link shows a few more. They get caught every once in a while, but considering the shouting down of the examples of discrimination the movie "Expelled" exposed, it's probably safe to say that penalties for discrimination by the scientific community are about as rare as a speed limit violating driver receiving a ticket for every time he speeds. What you have shown is that pseudoscientists are using political pressure to force people to hire them, or pay out when they refuse to hire a pseudoscientist. I really don't see anything wrong with not hiring or firing a scientist who refuses to use science. That is the way it should be. When your beliefs compromise your science then you are no longer a scientist.
Finally, the National Academy of Science. It's a non-profit U.S. government organization, begun in 1863. Yes it is, just like the National Institutes of Health which fund grants in the biological sciences. I have more experience with the NIH, so I will speak to that. How does this granting agency work? First, Congress decides how much money they are going to give to these granting agencies. They also decide who is going to run the agency (currently, it is the outspoken evangelical Dr. Francis Collins who previously ran the NIH Human Genome Project). This is the input that taxpayers have. They decide, through their representatives, how much money is going to go into the system and the leadership within the NIH. Once that money is received by the NIH they will decide which areas of research they would like to focus on most, and then advertise for Letters of Intent. If the scientist meets the requirements for NIH funding as judged by the LoI, then they are allowed to submit a research grant. In the grant they will describe the work they have already done, the hypotheses they will test, and the experiments they will use to test the hypotheses. They will also submit a budget. These grants will be judged by a group of peers who are not chosen based on their religious views, but rather as their reputation as scientists. Right now, about 5-10% of these grants will be funded. Nowhere on these grants do you list your religious affiliation. I really, really doubt you could ever determine a scientist's religious beliefs by reading a grant. To prove this, I give you this challenge. I have picked a paper at random which can be found here: Prevention of cardiomyopathy in mouse models lacking the smooth muscle sarcoglycan-sarcospan complex - PMC I haven't even read it, and I do not know the authors. Your challenge is to read the paper and determine the religious beliefs of the authors. If you fail to do so, then your claims about discrimination are moot. There is simply no way to determine a person's religious belief by their science, at least for those who are actually doing science. Your second challenge is to describe what types of experiments would be in a grant for research in intelligent design. What types of experiments would be done? Mind you, this grant can not deal with evolution. It must deal with intelligent design. If you are going to claim discrimination, then you need to show that there is actual research to discriminate against. Are you up to either challenge? Edited by Taq, : No reason given.
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Taq Member Posts: 10073 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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Rather than mob Marc, I think we should nominate the authors of the three highest-rated messages in this thread as sole participants. Three versus one is still a bit unfair but Marc has demonstrated at least an interest in responding to as many participants, if not more, in the past. In that spirit, I'd ask Marc to hold off on any reply for perhaps a few days or so, and then respond only to those messages which have been most highly rated. Or, any additional messages that he may choose, with the understanding that doing so constitutes his invitation for that author to participate. A process of variation filtered through selection . . . hmmm, I think I like the sound of that. May the fittest arguments survive!!!!
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Taq Member Posts: 10073 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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If you need an explanation I will supply one, but I think this speaks for itself:
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Taq Member Posts: 10073 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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A legitimate question - my definition of atheist in this case is anyone with a political opposition to traditional religious practice in the U.S. such as, but not limited to None of what you have posted deals with preventing people from praticing religious traditions. NONE!! No scientist is shutting down churches or dragging people out of mosques. No scientist I am aware of is calling for a constitutional ammendment or law that would prevent people from participating in religious beliefs, ceremonies, or rites. What you have cited is scientists refusing to hire bad scientists. That's it. Why should universities be forced to hire scientists who push pseudoscience? Can you give us one good reason?
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Taq Member Posts: 10073 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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So who is to blame for the poor reception that ID supporters get within the scientific community? Quite frankly, it is the ID supporters themselves.
Let's say that I am sitting on a review board that decides which professors get tenure within the science department. Now, tenure is something that is earned. This isn't something you get merely for hanging around for a few years. Professors earning tenure are expected to be active researchers, to bring money into the department through research grants, and to supply research opportunities for graduate students. As you review the applications for tenure you find that one of them is far below standards. This applicant did show promise during his postdoc years, but once he moved out from under the shadow of his mentor he just stopped doing science. The papers he has published while at your university for the past 5 years are all based on work he did as a postdoc. You ask his colleagues about the research he is doing and they all report the same thing. He isn't scheduling any lab time that they are aware of. You then ask about his students. As it turns out, he has only had one student go through his lab in the last 5 years, and that student really didn't do any lab work. He currently has no other grad students working for him. Even worse, the applicant has brought in very little grant money, maybe a 20th of what other professors are bringing in. You also notice that he has a book listed on his CV. It is a pro-ID book. So here we have a professor who isn't doing research, isn't graduating students, and isn't bringing in grant money. So why should this person get tenure? Quite frankly, he shouldn't. You can take the ID book off of the CV and you still have a candidate that isn't anywhere close to meeting the standards set for tenure. Do you know who I am describing? Have you heard of Guillermo Gonzalez, author of the book "The Priveleged Planet"? He wasn't doing research. He wasn't graduating students. He wasn't bringing in grants. When they denied him tenure at Iowa State do you know what he did? He accused them of discriminating against him because of his pro-ID views. It never crossed his mind that it wasn't because of his pro-ID views. It was because he was not doing science. It was that simple. So when I hear complaints about discrimination against ID proponents my eyes do roll. ID supporters have shown time and again that their only ploy is to falsely play the persecution card. They don't have science to back them up, so they have to go with theatrics. ID supporters are their own worst enemies because their actions tell us all we need to know. Edited by Taq, : No reason given.
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Taq Member Posts: 10073 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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But different people have different definitions of what a pseudoscientist is. Some think Michael Shermer is a pseudoscientist. But since the NAS is in control, it defines someone like Michael Behe as a pseudoscientist. And so Michael Shermer is in! Behe admitted under oath that in order for ID to be science you would have to redefine what science is, and that redefinition would also include astrology. Behe admits that ID is pseudoscience. He just doesn't care.
I realize there are established procedures for many activities in scientific/government organizations. I’m suspicious of humans that serve as advisors, humans that are more and more willing to give offence to religion as they attempt to make science the all encompassing worldview that they seek for it. Defined procedures can be heavily tweaked in politics, and as we’re learning, in science. This is projection at its best. This is exactly what the ID movement is all about. The ID movement is a political action group that seeks to inject secterian religious beliefs into the public classroom. It also seeks to remove science that conflicts with their secterian religious beliefs. The ID movement is NOT a scientific movement. There is no ID research going on. It is COMPLETELY political. I say that we should take politics out of science and let the actual research stand.
If I can’t determine religious beliefs of certain authors, then it’s NOT POSSIBLE for them to discriminate against someone, or some scientific idea that they don’t like? If that were true, we could save ourselves a lot of time and money with the legal system. All we’d have to do is ask the accused if they committed the crime. If they say no, drop the case. Your logic is flawed in comparison to that of Razd. We are not judging a person's science by their religious beliefs since religions beliefs have nothing to do with science. Problems only arise when someone rejects scientific findings because of their religious beliefs, and this is exactly the case with ID and creationism as well as religiously motivated rejection of evolution.
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Taq Member Posts: 10073 Joined: Member Rating: 5.2
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Concerning the actual topic, most of us here understand that atheists no more control science than the Pope controls Christianity, but Marc believes science is unfriendly to creationism and/or ID because of its atheistic elements and not because the practitioners of creationism and ID aren't doing science. That could actually be a very interesting discussion if Marc would just stop distracting attention with his stilted definitions. It would be an interesting topic. I have often said that ID supporters want to play the role of Rosa Parks without actually getting on the bus. It would be one thing if they had good research to publish, and then have the atheistic cabal use underhanded politics to keep that research out of peer review journals. But is that really happening? Or perhaps the problem is not enough money for research. Perhaps ID scientists have great ideas for experiments that will directly test ID hypotheses, but they need $5 million or so to get a lab up and running in order to test these ideas. When they send in these research grants are they being covered up by this atheistic cabal? Is that really happening? I don't think either is happening. There is nothing to discriminate against. No ID scientist is sending in research grants that will directly test ID. No ID scientist is doing original research that directly tests ID hypotheses. No ID scientist is even trying to describe experiments or testable hypotheses as they relate to ID. I also think that ID supporters know this. This is why discussions dealing with ID almost automatically switch to attacks on evolution. ID is not a scientific pursuit. It is a religiously based rejection of evolution. This is why ID is not a part of science, and why ID "scientists" are looked down on. It isn't because of an ideological war between theists and atheists. It is because ID isn't science. Period.
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